Today, people are looking for an innovative approach to get competitive advantage in the market for their business. As a result, most of them end up investing heavily in content marketing.

But you can’t just dump a bunch of social media posts and call it a day. You need to execute the right content at the right time to build successful content marketing.

This is where a content plan template comes into place. You need to plan ahead when and how to execute your content ideas properly. A content plan will allow you to stay ahead of trends and be prepared for any strategic changes.

In RoyalCDKeys, you will learn how to implement your content plan template, make one of your own, and many tips that will help improve it further.

A content plan template (also known as a content calendar) is a document that will help you to organize your plan in advance. Using this schedule, you can track the progress of your content creation, identify trends and gaps, and see how you are performing against specific goals.

A content calendar is a very important tool for social media managers and social media marketing in general, as they ensure that the content is published at a certain time and place.

You'll also be able to place all the tasks and assets required to carry on your marketing strategy. This will include everything from blogs or social media posts to search engine optimization. They will be directly aligned with your marketing funnel.

A content calendar allows you to plan your content ideas in advance, so you will never be in the hurry to drop anything on your social media. But it isn't the only reason you should have a content plan template ready.

Your Team Keeps Aligned and Organized

A content plan template will help to keep everyone organized, as everyone can see what kind of content should be created and when it should be published. It will streamline your social media and website content, avoiding any sort of miscommunication within your team.

The different content departments must work cohesively in their marketing efforts. A content calendar will create an environment where they can achieve such objectives.

Saves Time and Ensures Consistency

Content creation is very time-consuming. But the content planning process through a content calendar will help you to stay ahead of your deadlines.

It also will keep your team members on the same page with the timelines and forecast if there will be any difficulties to achieve certain deadlines. These content calendars will help you identify bottlenecks affecting your content marketing efforts.

Another important aspect form an effective content marketing strategy is consistency. Whenever you use your content plan template to plan your posts, the team can publish such content on schedule.

This consistency in your marketing content will provide your team with a familiar cadence of work. It will help your target audience anticipate when you will post your next piece of content.

Keeps Your Audience Engaged

Your brand needs to keep your audience engaged with your content. It is key for content marketing success. And a content calendar will help you maintain the audience's interest.

It allows the publication of timely, relevant content.

Additionally, it will ensure keeping on track with your cadence of content, which is important to keep your audience engaged with your brand.

Tracks Performance on Your Social Media More Efficiently

It is very important to track your social media performance to check what is working and what is falling short.

A content plan template will allow you to track how certain pieces of your brand's content perform whenever they are published.

It will also ensure that you are consistent with your content production, which is another crucial part of tracking your performance.

They are often mistaken for one another but are essentially different concepts. A content strategy is not a content plan.

To summarize, content strategy determines the "how" and "why" certain content strategies should be used to achieve specific marketing goals. In comparison, content planning will answer the "what," "when," and "where," using various content items and assets as part of your existing content strategy to reach your objectives.

Essentially, a content plan is the assets you will use to produce high-quality content. In contrast, content strategy consists of the ideas to create content and describes how you can keep the creative juices flowing.

A content calendar has to provide its many content creators with useful information that can be used for any blog post or any other sort of valuable content.

Your content plan template should follow the next guidelines:

• Your target audience must be clearly stated. It should clearly define who your content is intended for and arrange your content inventory in a way to appeal to these targets.

• Your content can be delivered in different forms. So, you need to define what kind of post or social media content you will upload.

• Your audience has a need or an issue, and your content should provide a clear solution to solve such problems.

• Define who will be creating certain content. Do you have staff specialized in content creation? Or are you going to contract a freelancer for this task? Of course, provide them with all the important tools, your publishing schedule, and an editorial calendar.

• Keep tabs on any additional costs required, as you might need to pay for a web developer, subscription for certain software, etc.

• Depending on your marketing goals, you should also take care of your brand voice, tone, structure and layout, categories, and URLs.

Of course, many practices will improve your content plan template and ease your way to achieving your business goals.

Next, we will give some of the best content planning tips to help you create the best high-quality content and how your audience can make the most of it.

Choose a Content Business Model

Your strategy will function as a roadmap. You need to establish how your brand will connect to your audience and how both can move on to achieving their goals.

There are several ways to find the best content marketing tactics for your business that you can follow based on structure, experience, resources, and objectives:

• Creating Content as a Player: Your content is seen as a contributor to other business communication strategies.

• Creating Content as a Performer: You are an expert, and your content aims to build an addressable audience through your media platforms.

• Creating Content as a Processor: Your company offers content as a service.

• Creating Content as a Platform: The content IS your business, as it is self-sufficient and a fully integrated media organization.

Your Brand Content Must Stand Out

Your content should have a unique brand voice, and everyone on the team should be under the same idea. This identity must reflect your values, mission, and purpose and should be done under a unique quality standard.

There is a five-step process that will help you to establish your brand voice while remaining loyal to your core ideas:

• Get a sample of your best content and perform a critical analysis of each. It will allow you to set up a small group of assets that outlines your brand voice and qualities.

• Try to describe your brand voice in a short sentence. Categorize your assets into distinctive themes. Describe their core qualities based on what your audience will be expecting from your brand.

• Make a chart to visualize how each characteristic should be applied to your content.

• Ensure that your team understands the chart and knows how to implement your brand identity.

• Revisit your chart as your business evolves.

Look for Specialized Content Creators

Surely your team is full of competent and talented people that know how to do their job. But for a certain type of content, you will need a specialist. It might be a good idea to outsource this work, especially if you are dealing with something outside your team's comfort zone.

It is a task that would take some time, as you want to find the right person to write your pieces of content and, hopefully, if they do a good job, keep a working relationship whenever you need it.

Look up on places like LinkedIn, Fiverr, Upwork, or Contently, to name a few, for people that are specialized in content creation, and check if their skills align with what you are asking.

Make a Marketing Mission Statement

A marketing mission statement will cement the purpose of why you are creating certain pieces of content and establish the priorities and perspectives that will uphold to pursue such a mission.

It is a crucial aspect that works as a guide for your decisions to make throughout the entire project. To create a mission statement, you can follow the next guidelines to avoid adding too much (or too little) to it:

• Be concise and simple. Describe your mission clearly to ensure your teammates understand your brand's content.

• Distinguish your brand and establish why it stands out from your competitors.

• In a short sentence, establish your purpose, what will motivate your audience, and what you want them to think, know and do about your brand.

• If you make content that tries to appeal to everyone everywhere, you will fall short and, ultimately, fail. Try to aim toward a niche audience. Pick an area of specialization, and make sure that your marketing strategy aims for it.

Streamline Your Social Media Marketing

Picking the right places to post your content could be tricky. Each social media platform has its own set of rules, opportunities, value propositions, and (especially) audiences.

One way to simplify the decisions on which social media you should focus and what kind of content should be uploaded is creating a channel plan.

It is a document where you can sort out the different platforms to which you aim to upload your content and establish your purpose, editorial plan, and metrics for each one. You can check such a table in this Excel template from the website ContentMarketingInstitute.

Use the Right Metrics to Check Your Content’s Performance

Don't just create your content and call it a day. You will need to demonstrate that your content is making an impact and driving new viewers to your business. To do that, you should measure your content's performance.

Using the right KPIs (key performance indicators) will give you a clear insight into whether your marketing efforts are in the right direction or if some are falling short. It will also offer a perspective on what should be done next and how you can correct certain content that didn't perform well.

Ultimately, the key metric that you will always be looking into is the "Return to Investment" (ROI) to measure your success as a content creator. Additionally, there are other key metrics that you should consider:

• Click-Through Rates (CTR): Clicks leading to your website content. Also, email campaigns can help you to identify how your audience answers certain calls to action and how they move through your content.

• Open Rates From Email: It shows whether your subject lines or titles resonate with your audience.

• Time Spent: You must check how much time your audience spends on your website and see why it could fluctuate.

• Invitations to Contribute: If you invite your audience to a certain event, check how many respond to your invitations by attending in-person events or appearing in videos or podcasts. It will be an indication of thought leadership.

• Results from Research and Surveys: You can survey your audience about your company and check how well your brand performs in search engines.

Now that you know everything regarding the content plan, you can implement it on your projects.

The best way to create an effective content calendar is to create your own based on another template. And you can check some great content plan templates right below. You won't need specialized software for it. Only to have Microsoft Excel already installed on your PC.

If you need a CD key for Excel, get one at a low price from the RoyalCDKeys store. You will get the latest version of the Office package, which includes Excel, Word, Access, PowerPoint, Outlook, and more programs.

Standard Content Plan Template

This template will help you to organize potential topics by theme. You will be able to provide a brief summary of the topic, the content's angle, and the target reader persona, determine the type of content that you will need, and describe your main goal.

You can download this template for Excel from Smartsheet.

Content Calendar Template

This calendar template allows you to easily track the progress of each piece of content and regularly check if they are hitting your goals. It also offers a variety of features, such as highlighting cells, changing font colors, adding rows and columns, and more ways to customize your template.

Download it from Vertex42.

Website Content Plan Template

With this template designed for your website content, you can organize it into different groups. You can add a description for each entry and detail your audience takeaways to make sure that you are structuring your content in a way that is useful for visitors.

Download it from Smartsheet.

Content Marketing Plan Template

This template works perfectly as a complement for your content plan template, as you will able to keep track of your uploads on different social media platforms, their key dates, and establish their priority, among other things.

Download it from GanttPro.

Content Inventory Worksheet

This template will help you to keep track of your content inventory and use it alongside your content calendar. It provides space to add page titles and types, topics, keywords, meta descriptions, page author, and more.

You can also use it to track search data and check performance metrics to update your existing content.

Download it from Smartsheet.

A good marketing team with powerful event logistics and consistent creative operations knows how important it is to make an effective marketing campaign. A content plan template will help your team stay on track and ensure your marketing efforts are well-delivered.

Using a well-organized content strategy with a content calendar to complement each other is key to achieving a solid plan and successful work in the marketing department. And the free templates provided above will give you the perfect head-start to perform those tasks.